


Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Mirabai0821



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Crisis of Faith, Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:00:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4293453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirabai0821/pseuds/Mirabai0821
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How much would it take for Cullen Rutherford to loose his faith? </p><p>Too much, yet not enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Eyes Were Watching God

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.  
> Really.

He strode, a man with glorious and dark purpose.

Down the steps, past the garden, through the wooden door.

Mother Giselle was at her prayers, old form kneeling with great sacrifice before the stone statue of Andraste.

He did not care that the door slammed behind him, startling the old woman from her devotionals.

"Commander Rutherford."

Her eyes were sorrowful, containing in a stare all the pain that washed across Skyhold like a diseased wave.

"Leave." He hissed, almost making himself hoarse with the word. He did not care that wizened woman flinched.

"Perhaps we should pray together Commander, in these trying times..."

"I DID NOT COME TO PRAY!" He spat, spittle flying with the last syllable.

The candles flickered with his roar, but the Mother-- the sacrifice in the lion's den, did not waver.

"Commander...Cullen, The Maker... He has a..."

"Do not speak to me of the fucking Maker!"

His eyes were red, dry and cried out. Pain hugged his mind like an old friend come home to visit. And for the first time in his life, he embraced his suffering. He let it fuel him. It powered him as the waterfall below powered the bellows of the Undercroft, stoking his rage higher and higher—a fan to the flame.

Mother Giselle had learned to pick her battles, and this one was not worth the fight.

She gathered herself up, stumbling on shaking, aged knees, before hobbling out, noting that he did not once offer help.

Mother Giselle closed the door softly behind her and in that silent, empty chapel the hooking of the latch thundered louder than when he slammed it.

Alone, as it always was for him.

Cullen was a good Andrastian. He knew the forms, the traditions.

He should be on his knees now, hands clapsed in prayer, head bowed, eyes closed.

He stood.

His hands were fists.

He held his head high.

And his eyes burned.

"I have been Your loyal servant. Devoted since I was 15 years old."

The statue of the Lady stared down at him, granite eyes wide and mournful as if the stone could feel his pain and his anger.

"I prayed every day! I memorized the every word of the Chant of Light!"

The young initiates used to have races with the senior instructors, to see who could get through the Canticle of Trials (by far the longest of the verses) the quickest while remaining intelligible.

Cullen, by far, won every time he set his tongue to it.

"I knew my catechism, my history, I _devoted my soul_ to You."

He gripped his hands at Her alter, now he bowed his head, locking his eyes on the offering bowls and the candles at Her feet. He gripped the wood harder so that his knuckles whitened.

"I loved You _both_. Ardently. I did not pay lip service like the others. In my heart, and Maker You knew my heart, _I loved You both_."

And how had such service been repaid?

With death.

Mutilation.

Pain.

And worse yet: the inability to forget such.

Yet Cullen was ever a good Andrastian. During his torment at Kinloch, something that lasted only hours but felt like _ages_. What had he done? He prayed for deliverance. As his brothers and sisters succumbed to the rending claws of demons, the Maker's name a curse on their bloodied lips, he remained stalwart in his faith.

Doubtless and sure.

"I thought I had done something wrong, that my _dalliance_ was being punished. So in Kirkwall I redoubled my faith and girded it with paranoia and fanaticism. So long as I believed, so long as I prayed, nothing like that would ever happen again, but oh no. No. NO."

She asked him once which was worse: Kinloch or Kirkwall. He replied that it was like choosing between having your liver ripped out or your guts set afire.

Both hurt, it was just different kinds of pain.

But in someways, Kirkwall hurt worse because the pain he experienced he willingly and complicity inflicted upon others-- _and thought it was righteous._

That hurt worse after the fact, stung harder than the beatings and the raping he endured at Kinloch. Because he'd done the much same with a grim smile on his face and the Chant in his heart.

"I was broken after the second time. A wounded thing. I felt unable to move forward yet unwilling to be left behind. But I still had You. I had You both. Even if I wasn't a templar anymore, so long as the Maker and his Bride were by my side, all things were endurable."

The Maker comforted him in the early days of the Inquisition. He spent hours in Haven's Chantry, head bowed, eyes closed, and hands clasped. Sometimes he was alone. Sometimes a little mageling would come to join him. A pretty, quiet, slip of a girl with eyes that burned like yellow starlight.

"And then, You answered my prayers. You answered both our prayers."

Lady Trevelyan, Cullen believed, had been sent by the Maker's word and Andraste's hand to deliver him.

When there was darkness, she was light.

When he doubted, she was surety.

When he faltered, she strengthened him.

And when he hurt, she was his balm.

Together their love and their faith saw them through the many trials of Corypheus and beyond.

She became his everything, his very reason for drawing breath. And when she became his wife, no being, living or dead, knew the joy he did.

"Was this our punishment then? Were we too happy? Did our bliss embitter You? IS THAT WHY?"

Cullen pounded his fist into the altar, startling the offerings but leaving them in place.

It was the Maker's will, they decided. For that could be the only reason they remained childless. She never quickened, no matter how hard they prayed, no matter how much they tithed and reaffirmed their faith.

Until she did.

Tears ran freely from him, as though to escape the burning _hatred_ in his eyes.

"'For nothing He has wrought shall be lost!'" Cullen, already broken, fractured further. His voice shook in his confessions, broken apart by moans and sobs. "Isn't that what the Chant says? That's what she said, that's what she said over and over as she SCREAMED!"

Their little one came too soon.

Far too soon.

Their miracle turned to ash in their mouths. Their praises shriveled up, morphing into moans and screams of horror.

As he lifted his eyes from the altar to the Maker's Bride, more tears traveled down the curve of his jaw, leaving salty burning trails of wetness soaking his neck.

"Her child, my child, our ..." He gasped, shaking and tremulous, " _Child_ ripped from her body in blood and agony. She screamed for You for hours, I was there, I watched it. **YOU MADE ME WATCH**. As she struggled. 36 hours, non-stop, no sleep, just Constant. Torment. And she prayed, prayed until the pain ripped away her ability to remember the words taught to her. She prayed to You. She _begged_ You to either end her suffering or deliver her..."

AND YOU DID NEITHER!"

The hands at the altar pulled hard to the right, ripping the wood from the anchors on the floor, toppling the bowls over, scattering the offerings to the dirty flagstones.

The alter itself, under the power of Cullen's rage, toppled over and splintered into three large pieces.

"Now she lay weeping for 36 hours more, clutching at her womb, moaning for the child she lost. Apologizing to me and hating herself because she believes it is her fault! Such a creature, such a wonderful and divine creature is begging me my forgiveness for her pain!"

He drew his sword and skewered a pew. He wished it had flesh so blood would weep from the wound.

"She cried for You!"

He stabbed another.

"She screamed for YOU!"

Another blow sundered yet another pew to kindling.

"AND YOU DID NOT ANSWER!"

Cullen, lyrium burning in his veins, empowering him like nothing he had ever felt, placed his hands on the statue of the Divine Lady and pulled. The stone did not budge, and so he kept pulling, straining and straining until he heard the muscles in his arms rip and pop, sinew separating from bone.

The statue groaned with movement, rising in tenor and pitch to his pained cries until it gave completely and fell with so loud a crash they felt the tremor in New Haven.

Cullen let go, unable to do anything else now since his arms had been rendered useless. He gazed upon the martyred Lady, Her face cracked in perfect halves right down the middle. Her body lay broken in several large pieces, Her hands still intact--palms upward in supplication.

The Lady begged him for mercy.

“We only ever loved You," Cullen said. "And all You gave us in return, was sorrow.”

Soldiers banged on the door and broke it down.

They came upon the ruined Chantry and their Commander amidst its carnage.

On his knees.

Hands clasped in prayer.

Head bowed.

And eyes closed.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Look. Don’t ask me. I wasn’t even in a dark place for this. 
> 
> We hurt the ones we love. The ones we love the most, we hurt the most. This hurt me. I guess it was about that time.
> 
> Also, if there's a chance for me to make a Zora Neale Hurston reference, FUCK YES, I'm going to.
> 
> Find me on tumblr: mirabai0821.tumblr.com


End file.
